New Trans-Atlantic Internet Cable Laid by Facebook and Microsoft

To be finished in fall 2017, Facebook and Microsoft are laying the groundwork for a new Internet cable running under the Atlantic ocean.

It will be the highest-capacity trans-Atlantic cable yet, stretching from Virginia to Spain, sending videos at 160 terabytes per second. The cable will transfer other types of data too, but videos cause the highest demand for terabytes and terabytes of data.

Microsoft’s Skype and Facebook’s live video use plenty of bandwidth now, but these media behemoths are surely looking ahead to virtual reality content, which requires even more data than video.

The new cable will add significant Internet capacity between Europe and the Americas.